1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer based data management systems, and more particularly, to a computer based data integration and management processing system and method for evaluating and optimizing personal and business strategies.
The invention described herein discloses technology that enables individuals and businesses to evolve their decision making capabilities far beyond their current capacity. The present invention expands an individual's capacity to process and apply thousands of pertinent facts when making complex personal and business decisions. The present invention comprises a user-friendly computer program product that enables a user to analyze complex situations, objectively evaluate alternative solutions, and create and optimize personal or business strategies. The software is processor operated on a compatible computer system.
The computer program product of the instant invention allows the user to choose from a variety of missions. A mission is a particular task, project, or decision which an individual, employee, or business is contemplating. Upon selection of a specific mission, the data, including statements that define the criteria for creating value are retrieved from a database along with other pertinent facts that are critical to objective decision making. The user is then led through a process that enables the development of solutions and strategies that deliver many times more value than could normally be achieved.
The computer program product of the present invention is designed as two separate modules; one for data input and the other as a fixed application shell. By loading mission specific data into the input module, the application shell can instantly become a different software product for different users, markets, or industries. This flexibility enables new software products to be developed quickly and at minimal expense. The data that is manipulated by the software invention is compiled and comprises the collection, prioritization, analysis, and structuring of thousands of facts related to those individuals involved in, or affected by, the mission that is being contemplated. These "customers" may be an end user of a product, a manufacturer, a manager, or one's self when making personal decisions, to name a few. The facts are collected in advance and structured for each specific mission, loaded into the computer, or processor means, stored in predetermined memory locations, and processed by the software. The memory locations comprise a plurality of identifiable data storage array locations that are indexed by the processor and the software of the invention to pull requested or required data to assist the user in evaluating and optimizing their decisions for an unlimited number of missions. Accordingly, the applications of this invention are numerous. For example, by integrating mission specific data into the fixed application shell, the computer program product of the present invention can be adapted to: (1) provide individuals with the ability to create, evaluate, and optimize many personal strategies including career, education, relocation, relationship, philosophy of life and personal growth strategies; (2) provide organizations of all sizes with the ability to evolve generic, time-to-market processes such as product development, manufacturing, and other value-added processes such as planning, distribution, training and support; and (3) provide individuals and organizations of all sizes with the ability to create, evaluate, and optimize their proprietary strategies, such as energy generation and storage technologies, innovative thinking, two-way communications, new business evaluation, ergonomics and others.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When making complex personal and business decisions, individuals attempt to find the one solution that will enable them to optimally achieve their desired outcomes. This process is often referred to as a decision making, planning or strategic planning process. The resulting solution, or plan of action, is often referred to as a strategy. For purposes of this disclosure, strategy shall be defined as the means by which a business or individual achieves a set of desired outcomes.
A set of desired outcomes includes all the outcomes that are desired by those involved in, or affected by, a potential decision, plan or strategy. A complete set usually includes up to 150 unique outcomes. Each desired outcome is defined in a statement that includes what is desired, why it is desired and what must be done to insure the outcome is achieved. A desired outcome is a unique statement in that it is free from solutions and specifications, free from vague words, and the statement itself is valid and stable over time. Desired outcomes, however, are difficult to capture as people tend to talk about solutions. Solutions are the mechanism by which desired outcomes are achieved. A "good" solution will satisfy several preferred desired outcomes. As an example, a product developer's desired outcomes may include reducing the time to complete the product development cycle and insuring all design modifications are documented. One solution could be to invest in a CAD-CAM system, but other solutions are available.
When creating a plan or strategy there often exist dozens, or even hundreds, of potential solutions. The goal in developing a plan or strategy is to find the single solution that satisfies most of the desired outcomes. The optimal solution will also be the one that can be executed with the least amount of effort, cost, and risk.
To find or create the optimal solution for a given strategic situation, an individual must have the capability to know, remember, process and apply thousands of pertinent facts. Individuals and businesses can evolve their decision making capabilities far beyond their current capacity by applying the invention described herein.
Many individuals and businesses currently involved in decision making, planning and strategic planning activities are faced with unavoidable obstacles to successful decision making. These obstacles to success can be summarized as follows:
1. Individuals and businesses are often unaware of all the people or entities that must be considered to successfully create and execute a personal or business strategy. Important individuals, groups of individuals, or customers are sometimes overlooked, or under estimated, in the planning process. This oversight can cause the rejection or failure of a strategy;
2. Individuals and business are rarely aware of all the desired outcomes (typically totaling up to 150) that should be considered when making strategic decisions. In most cases less than 15 percent of the desired outcomes are known and many desired outcomes are poorly defined. It then follows that in most situations, the selected strategy could, at best, satisfy only up to 15 percent of the desired outcomes;
3. Areas of opportunity cannot be accurately determined without knowing which desired outcomes are most important and least satisfied. An inability to capture desired outcomes is one obstacle that makes the discovery of opportunity difficult. Without this information, individuals and businesses are unlikely to know where to focus their effort for maximum value creation. They may, therefore, apply their resources to activities that will produce little or no value;
4. Individuals and businesses are usually unaware of the impact that satisfying one desired outcome would have on the satisfaction of other desired outcomes. Implementing a solution to satisfy one desired outcome could negatively impact one or several other more important desired outcomes. Conversely, a solution that may satisfy one desired outcome could positively impact several other important desired outcomes. Unless all the desired outcomes and their inter-relationships are known, an individual's ability to discover or create the optimal solution is inhibited;
5. Individuals and businesses usually evaluate only a handful of potential solutions. It is often the case that dozens or even hundreds of other potential solutions exist, but they are never evaluated. It usually takes too much time to uncover and evaluate all possible solutions. The optimal solution is often left undiscovered.
6. Individuals often try to determine, in their head, which of the proposed solutions would best satisfy all the desired outcomes. There are limitations to a human mind, and it is apparent that it would be near impossible for an individual to accurately define the optimal solution given that there are potentially hundreds of solutions and up to 150 desired outcomes for any given strategic situation. There are just too many constants and variables.
For example, to solve a simultaneous equation in algebra, such as y=3 and y=x+1, there are two variables given, x and y. Most people cannot solve this relatively simple equation in their head. In most strategic situations, however, there are often over a hundred solutions (variables) and up to 150 desired outcomes (constants) that must be considered in order to effectively solve the equation. Thus, the probability of an individual optimally solving this complex equation in their head is near zero. Despite this fact, businesses and individuals often rely on their internal decision making abilities to determine which solution will best solve a complex strategic equation;
7. Individual and business strategies are often decided on gut feel, intuition, opinion, experience, emotion, history, or some other subjective criteria. Moreover, individuals in an organization often use different criteria to evaluate the same alternative solutions. The solutions are often discussed, argued, negotiated, and eventually compromised to the point where commitment is lacking and implementation is slow. Using subjective or inappropriate criteria to evaluate alternative solutions often produces unpredictable and less than desirable results;
8. Individuals and businesses often lack the ability to quantify the value that one proposed solution has over another. Since the evaluation criteria is often undefined, not agreed to, or unprioritized, it is difficult to ascertain the amount of value that one solution has over another. This lack of information makes it difficult to reach a conclusion or gain consensus on any solution;
9. Individuals and businesses often stop short of defining the optimal solution because they are unaware of the criteria that defines the optimal solution. Without having access to that criteria, an individual is likely to focus on areas of the mission that they find easy to address or personally interesting. Using this approach often misdirects the application of scarce resources and may not produce the desired result;
10. Individuals and businesses will often prototype, develop, or implement a solution to assess its potential value. Prototyping a solution often requires spending thousands or millions of dollars in advance of knowing whether or not the solution will be successful. Implementing a solution to test its value may drive a de facto strategy that could be difficult to change. If the potential value of a solution could be determined in advance of its development, much time and money could be saved; and
11. Individuals and businesses will often focus on specific parts or elements of a mission rather than focusing on optimizing all the elements within a given mission. Thus, one specific area is improved while negatively impacting other areas. The overall effect may be undesirable.
It should also be noted that individuals and organizations often choose strategies that have worked for someone else. This approach is seldom successful as it ignores the desired outcomes that make that specific situation unique. The optimal strategy for a specific strategic situation is rarely a generic strategy as it is unlikely that the individuals involved, and their desired outcomes, are the same in any two strategic situations.
As the limitation of the human mind is well recognized, there is found in the prior art a number of methods and systems for designing, planning, manufacturing and evaluating the development of goods and services. However, none of these addresses nor solves the problems noted above.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,041,972 issued to Frost and entitled "Method of Measuring and Evaluating Consumer Response for the Development of Consumer Products", discloses a method for evaluating consumer response and relates to methods for performing market research which involve measuring and evaluating the responses of consumers or of the relevant audience to consumer products which are to be marketed or presented to the audience, the members of which are in a position to choose between the items. The object of such methods is to determine how members of the audience will react to the introduction of new products to the market or to changes in the characteristics of an existing product. Marketing strategies can then be based upon the data obtained therefrom.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,111,392 issued to Malin and entitled "Design System for Creating Furniture Layouts" discloses a process for designing an arrangement of furniture pieces from a predetermined system of furniture. Malin essentially teaches an automated approach to speed up the creation of implementable office furniture layouts.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,054 issued to Kienzel et al., discloses an expert system for automatically generating gear designs. Kienzel et al., teach an automotive generated gear design process which designs parallel axis gear sets to meet constraints and performance goals. The process generates multiple designs by choosing a design approach based on performance goals and using the approach to determine which standard gear and gear set design equations to apply to generic gear and gear set models. The process then chooses the "best" design to meet performance criteria and design constraints. A gear designer supplies design goals and constraints. Based on the gear designer's choice of input and design approach, an equation sequencer applies standard gear design equations to generic gear set models by combining hundreds of equations to calculate gear parameters. The goals, constraints, design approach, and sequenced equations are distilled into an automatically generated program used to generate, sort and evaluate designs. As a result, hundreds of designs can be sorted and compared both graphically and numerically.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,694, issued to Parrish et al., teaches a computer based data integration and management process for work force planning and occupational free adjustment. Parrish teaches a system and method using a number of databases that are either created internally or are imported from existing databases. These databases are manipulated by the invention or skill matching analysis based on a rigorous behavioral skill analysis of target occupations, using one or more predetermined analysis metrics and an examination of individual skills using metrics with similar behavioral attributes.
A theory of product quality enhancement utilizing matrix analysis is loosely referred to as Quality Function Deployment (QFD). However, the prior art has not refined QFD theory into a workable system for widespread use in strategic planning and evaluation. As a result, the application of QFD is limited and has not gained wide commercial acceptance as a tool for strategic evaluation.
None of the foregoing references provide a readily adaptable computer based data integration and management processing system and method for evaluating and optimizing personal and business strategies.
Consequently, the present invention is directed to overcoming the disadvantages and shortcomings of the prior art by providing a readily adaptable computer based data integration and management processing system and method for evaluating and optimizing personal and business strategies using matrix analysis.